A Tribe of Misfits: Blood and Steel
by JMIII
Summary: Taking place on the opposite side of the world, away from Azula's machinations in Westeros, Toph Beifong and Katara start their own journey.


(Prologue – Foot of the Bone Mountains, near the Realm of the Jhogwin: 5/01/283 AC) Cu'nah I

She felt beads of sweat running down her face, and the hardness of the ground beneath her feet, as her and her small group of villagers raced across the open prairie. Years of hard work helping to raise the village, and running down beasts for food, had seen to it that her young body was well prepared for long sprints. Others had not been so fortunate, as she could already see the bodies of several of her fellows having fallen behind, collapsing into exhausted heaps as their bodies could no longer continue their flight to the foot of the mountains, whose peaks jutted out into the sky. Several from her village had chosen to flee into the forests of the Ifequevron to the north, but she knew not if they had made it.

She fought back tears, wishing to go back to help them, to fight, but she knew it was futile. The tendrils of black smoke that rose from the direction of her village, the faint hoots, and screams coming from it told her as such. _'__I should have been faster,'_ she chided herself. A Khalasar, the largest she had ever seen at almost two-thousand horses strong, had captured members of her hunting party, and she had held no doubt about what was to come from that. Her legs had carried her swiftly, but the village had been to ill-prepared to flee. The men gathered what they had, sticks, rocks, whatever they could, and had beckoned for them to flee. _'__All of the women and children that could,'_ Cu'nah bit her lip, remembering the infants left in their cradles alongside the women who had just given birth too weak to move, her eyes nearly giving way to the tears that so desperately wished to be freed. She felt the ground begin to rumble beneath her feet, and her heart sank. Her eyes spotted a small part of the horde, almost a hundred horsemen, by her count, coming from the north. _'__The direction of the forests,'_ she told herself. _'__They didn't make it,'_ Cu'nah grieved only a moment before she focused on the Dothraki once more, as they quickly gained speed and turned towards them. She measured the distance between them, the mountains, and the horsemen. _'__They will ride us down before we get to the foot of the mountains,' _the thought was crushing, but she would not let her people think otherwise. "Come! We must hurry! We are almost there!" she shouted, waving her hands forward to the villagers trailing behind her. Once again she felt the ground shake ahead, and she felt herself hit something hard and small before tumbling over and falling face-first into the grass.

"Ooof!" the new voice cried. "Hey! Watch where you're going!"

Cu'nah looked up, and spotted a small girl, with light gray eyes, laying to her side. The strange girl held strange features she had never seen before and wore even stranger clothing, loose green leggings, and tunic, with a long vest the color of sand, all fastened together at the waist with a brown leather belt fixed with small metallic pins at its outer edges. As the diminutive girl rose from the grass, Cu'nah spotted a deep hole resting alongside her, where another voice called out.

"Is it safe?" she heard it ask, a faint echo reverberating from below.

"Yeah, just ran into one of the natives," the girl answered in a gruff tone, not at all worried at the encroaching Dothraki. Cu'nah saw several of the villagers race past her, all staring back in confusion before continuing on.

The sound of running water emanated from the black pit and she beheld a blue-eyed, dark-skinned girl, wearing a blue dress with loose azure leggings beneath, rise out riding a spout of water. Cu'nah fell back, landing on her bottom, awestruck at the sight when the girl returned the water to the waterskin strapped to her side. Blue eyes looked down at her and smiled. "Hi, I'm Katara, what's…" she began before glancing back from where Cu'nah had come. The hoofbeats suddenly brought her back to her senses and she panicked ready to voice her concern, but the girl, Katara, beat her to them. "Toph," she growled, reaching for her waterskin, "I thought you said it was safe?"

"Well, they are the first signs of life we found since we got here, I didn't want to pummel them before getting information out of them. Not to mention, they are riding weird animals that I've never felt before, and," the small girl, Toph, shrugged then tilted her head curiously. She knelt and placed a hand to the ground, then narrowed her eyes, a frown quickly replacing the queer expression on her tiny face. "There's a whole mess of noise coming from that direction…none of it good," the girl pointed to the direction of Cu'nah's village.

Cu'nah saw several of the fallen villagers about to be overcome by the Dothraki riders on their heels, the one farthest from their location, a little girl who had collapsed, had raised her hands in defense as the rider unsheathed his curved blade and moved to strike.

"Toph!" the blue-eye girl shrieked.

"I got it, Princess," the small one replied.

She felt the ground shake as it had before, and the little girl who had been the intended victim of an Arakh, disappeared beneath the dirt, leaving behind a very confused Dothraki. Cu'nah saw dust clouds form in snake-like patterns across the ground, and one-by-one the villagers who had fallen behind vanished beneath the ground. She wheeled her head and spotted the shorter girl with both her feet planted firmly into the ground, arms pulled to her sides in clenched fists. The girl raised both her arms, a deep frown lining her face, and the earth rumbled even more violently than it had when the others had disappeared beneath the soil. The Dothraki shouted, catching her attention and forcing her to look back, only to see a large box-shaped slab of earth erected where the riders had once been. Cu'nah turned to the girl, "The others, what have you done with them?" she asked sharply, worried about her companions.

"They are fine," Toph reached out in the direction of the slab, and opened her hand.

She felt the reverberating earth and saw as her people rose out from the ground, confused, terrified, and relieved all at once. "What of the Dothraki?" Cu'nah asked in curiosity, not caring about their fates, only wondering to where they were and if they would return.

The small one, crossed her arms and shrugged. "They're in there," she nodded to the slab of earth. "It's going to take them awhile to get out."

The others from the village advanced cautiously towards them, seemingly forgetting their earlier haste.

"Dothraki? Never heard of them before. Is that who they are?" the blue-eyed one chimed in and reached for her shoulder.

Her blood shot up and she recoiled in defense, not expecting the touch. The girl withdrew in an instant, a string of water hovering at her side. "Apologies," she nodded, a stinging wetness forming in her eyes, "I was not expecting comforting hands," Cu'nah brushed the tears aside and collapsed to her knees. "My village! Can you help them?!" she pleaded, grasping at the girls blue clothing, praying these strange maegi would bring their magic to her people's defense.

The blue one knelt and placed a soft hand at her shoulder, a keen focus in her twinkling sapphire eyes. "Toph?" her tight-lipped response came.

"Way ahead of you, Princess," the ground began to shake, rising like a wave beneath the small girl's feet. She moved her arms and legs in unison and sped past them, the air whipping her hair about. "Stay with them, I'll take care of it!" Toph shouted in the distance, her voice sounding like a squeak beneath the roaring sounds of the churning earth.

"Toph!" The dark girl cried out, rising quickly in an attempt to give chase before seemingly abandoning the idea. "Toph, be careful!" she shouted with her hands cupped around her mouth.


End file.
